


The Parting Glass

by equestrianstatue, omnishambles



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1920s, 1970s, 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Area Demon Going To Go Ahead And Consider That A Date, English Civil War, Georgian Period, Hereditary Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol, The Blitz, The Dissolution of the Monasteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24407167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equestrianstatue/pseuds/equestrianstatue, https://archiveofourown.org/users/omnishambles/pseuds/omnishambles
Summary: Aziraphale, it seemed, was being forced, and not for the first time, to sup with the devil – or rather, notthedevil, obviously, but certainly a member of his senior management team. Still. He was exceedingly thirsty.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 272
Kudos: 420





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A fic that we wrote almost all of last summer, but, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, never actually finished or posted. But now we have, and are.

**1539**

_Forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses of monks, canons, and nuns; whereby the governors of such religious houses, and their convent, spoil, destroy, consume, and utterly waste, to the great infamy of the King's highness and the realm; and by a cursed custom so rooted and infested, that a great multitude of the religious persons in such small houses do rather choose to rove abroad in apostasy, than to conform themselves to the observation of good religion…_

“Brother Aziraphale,” said the sad, steady voice of Brother Thomas, “will you pray with us?”

“Of course,” said Aziraphale, and knelt, for all the good it would do. In fact, considering the political delicacy of the whole business, he made triply sure that there was no way anyone Upstairs could possibly be listening before allowing himself so much as a train of thought.

_Oh, Lord, I know this clearly isn’t top of your list of priorities, but this all seems a bit unnecessary, doesn’t it?_

A heavy thumping sound came from the great door set into the abbey gatehouse. There was the whinnying of horses, the stamping of feet, the rough shouting of voices.

“By our sovereign lord, King Henry, Defender of the Faith, you are charged to open this gate!”

Aziraphale opened his eyes, and frowned.

“For our martyred abbot,” murmured Brother Thomas, “we will not do as they say.”

“They martyred your abbot?” whispered Aziraphale, rather concerned.

“He would not give the abbey over to the king. He was hanged for treason.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale said. “Do you not think that you might be better off… not getting martyred yourselves?”

“We are better off in the service of God.”

“Right,” said Aziraphale, flicking his eyes skyward. “Yes, of course. But the thing is… could there be any chance that it doesn’t, um, matter too much to God, really, whether you stay here in the abbey or not?”

Brother Thomas reached out and laid a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “You are afraid. I understand. But I promise you that the Lord is with us.”

“Hmm,” said Aziraphale.

There was another booming knock from the gate. “Open up, I say!”

Through several feet of wood and stone, and the aural interference of a dozen monks praying fervently around the courtyard, Aziraphale’s ears pricked up.

“If you do not open this gate, we will burn it to the ground!”

“Oh, don’t let them burn anything, it’s really not worth it,” said Aziraphale to Brother Thomas. “Look,” he added, nodding at young Brothers William and John, who were looking increasingly worried that the Lord might, in fact, not be with them, “those poor lads, we can’t let them be martyred, really, can we?”

“You are too human, Brother Aziraphale,” said Brother Thomas, sorrowfully. The resolution on his face was slipping.

Aziraphale gestured towards the gate. “What if we let these men in, and asked them nicely not to take any of your very favourite chalices, but most importantly nobody got hurt and nothing got burnt down?”

“In the name of King Henry – !” bellowed the voice from outside.

“Could you just give us a minute!” Aziraphale shouted.

The knocking on the door, surprised, faltered.

Aziraphale looked at Brother Thomas and said, “Please.” He didn’t perform a miracle, or even do anything, really. But he supposed that in moments of particular sincerity, there was some kind of aura about him, almost a glow, that humans seemed to find compelling.

Brother Thomas lowered his eyes, and nodded. Crossing himself, he stood up. Aziraphale hurried to follow him to his feet.

“Don’t worry,” said Aziraphale, “I’ll get it.”

Leaving a slightly perplexed Brother Thomas in his wake, Aziraphale went to the great door. He threw back the bolts, heaving it open just far enough to see –

“Crowley,” he said, irritated.

“Aziraphale,” said Crowley, astonished. And then, “Nice cowl.”

“What the Hell are you doing here?”

Crowley was dressed in black, his doublet slashed with an unusually modest quantity of red silk. His hat had a raven-black feather sticking out of it at a jaunty angle. Three other men stood a little way off, sombrely-dressed, one of them holding the reins of four horses. “What does it look like?” he said.

“It looks like you’re impersonating a King’s Commissioner.”

A small smile stole across Crowley’s face. “I’m not,” he said. “I _am_ a King’s Commissioner.”

“What?”

“Oh, long story, quite funny actually, I’ll tell you later, you’ll laugh.” Crowley, perhaps realising that Aziraphale was glaring at him in a way that implied he was _not_ going to laugh, cleared his throat and jerked his head in the direction of the men behind him. “Anyway, can we come in? The boys are getting a bit antsy.”

“Not much choice,” grumbled Aziraphale, pulling the door the rest of the way open. “If I don’t want to watch you burn the place down.”

“Oh, we weren’t actually going to burn anything, obviously. Look, no torches. Got the gate open though, didn’t it?”

“There’s no _obviously_ about it,” said Aziraphale, as Crowley waved The Boys through. “They’ve already lost an abbot.”

Crowley pulled a face. “Oh, I heard about that. Poor bugger. Why’d he have to go and get so bloody religious all of a sudden?”

Aziraphale glared at Crowley again, in a way that he hoped made it very clear that this wasn’t at all what he’d been thinking himself.

Crowley didn’t seem to notice, because he’d been distracted by one of The Boys hovering at his elbow. “Yes?” he said.

“My Lord Crowley…” said the man, with some deference, glancing at the assemblage of waiting monks.

“Oh, right, of course. Actually, tell you what, you lot can do this one, my treat. Deed of Surrender, to be presented to – who’s in charge here?” he asked Aziraphale, who nodded in the direction of Brother Thomas. “There, him, off you go. Don’t worry, I’ll handle this fellow. He’s from out of town.” Crowley glanced back at Aziraphale with the hint of a smirk at the corner of his mouth, as if he were expecting Aziraphale to share the joke.

Aziraphale folded his arms and looked at the ground. He felt somehow on the back foot, caught off-guard. He and Crowley had grown rather used to each other over the millennia, of course; Crowley had never seemed particularly interested in the concept of ‘professional distance’, and Aziraphale had struggled to see too much harm in a little bit of off-the-clock socialising. A chance to talk office politics, to swap travel recommendations, and, for a little while, not to have to pretend to be human. To let the mask slip, just slightly. Aziraphale had actually grown quite comfortable in Crowley’s presence. But it was a presence he liked to prepare himself for, and he didn’t always know what to do with himself when he hadn’t.

“So what _are_ you doing here, exactly?” Crowley asked him, as The Boys began officiously witnessing the Deed of Surrender.

“This is a house of God,” said Aziraphale, slightly sniffily.

Crowley gave him a look that clearly said: _Yes, and?_

“There’s a very good library here,” Aziraphale admitted. “I had a bit of time to spare, I’ve never got round to a proper read of _De Civitate Dei_ , so I thought…”

“You’re on _holiday_?” Crowley asked. “You did _know_ the monasteries were being forcibly suppressed before you set off, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course I did! I just thought maybe there’d be a bit more time!” Aziraphale twisted his mouth in irritation, looking deliberately away from Crowley’s open grin. “I should have known you’d be behind some of this… desecration.”

“Are you joking? This is entirely your lot’s shitshow. Nothing to do with me. I just realised that if word got Downstairs that there’d been any religious upset, and they found out I hadn’t so much as pitched in to help with the upsetting, there’d be Hell to pay. Literally.” Crowley rocked back on his heels, hands behind his back. “Anyway, I don’t see you miracleing any church plate to safety.”

“Well, no,” said Aziraphale. “We’ve had quite strict orders, actually. Non-interference.”

“Oh, _right_ ,” said Crowley, looking, if anything, more delighted. “This is all fully sanctioned, then, is it? You know, sometimes I think the Almighty actually _likes_ it when they fight over Her?”

“That’s obviously not true.”

“There’s no obviously about it. In fact, you might say it’s _ineff_ – ”

“Oh, do shut up,” said Aziraphale.

Crowley had the odd, pleased look on his face that he always got whenever he caught Aziraphale in a testy mood. He thought it was his bad influence, probably. Aziraphale watched as he leaned back against the wall of the gatehouse with an undulating motion that wasn’t entirely human, and which had a tendency to catch the eye.

“ _De Civitate Dei_ , did you say?” Crowley asked.

“Hmm? Yes.”

“You ever meet him?”

“What?” said Aziraphale, glancing up from the rather improbable angle Crowley’s body had made against the wall. “Who, St Augustine?”

“Yes.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Oh, shame. Absolute hoot in Carthage. Anyway,” Crowley said, his gaze wandering over to the abbey proper, where the despondent-looking monks were granting The Boys entrance to the chapter-house, “is it true, then? That they’re all handling each other’s rosaries?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Weird thing for people to get hung up on, really, in amongst everything else.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No,” said Crowley, after a moment. “Of course you don’t. Anyway, all this shutting down isn’t really so bad in practice, you know. They’re getting pensions. They might find they actually prefer not being monks.”

“The ones that are still alive, that is.”

“Oh, trust you to find the only abbey in a three-hundred-mile radius where anyone’s bothered to kick up a fuss. Most of them seem to have made their peace with it. I’m going to have to spice up the details when I write up the memo. A bit more looting, maybe.”

“And this isn’t looting?” asked Aziraphale, slightly hysterically, as one of The Boys emerged, loaded down with enough gold and silver that he’d had to balance a jewel-embroidered mitre on his own head.

“No, this is requisitioning in the name of the king. It would only be looting if anyone kept any of it for themselves,” Crowley said, with the look of someone who’d just realised they’d been missing something extremely obvious, and was going to have to make up for lost time. “Suits you, Master Ford,” he called, to the rather surprised and then pleased-looking man in black. “That gilt really brings out your eyes.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Such a shame that it’s going to get locked up with everything else and never even worn,” Crowley mused, aloud.

Master Ford, trying to get a glimpse of himself in the stained-glass window, suddenly also looked as if he was considering making up for lost time.

“You can’t let him keep that,” said Aziraphale.

“Can’t keep an eye on everything, can I?” Crowley said, sounding rather proud of himself. Then, “Why do you care? Non-interference, you said. So all of this must be part of the Great Plan. God literally knows why.”

Aziraphale found he couldn’t put an answer to this question into words in a way that didn’t sound utterly inadequate. “It’s nice here,” he said, eventually, a little miserably. “It’s peaceful, and… old. They’ve been living here for half a millennium, almost. Well, not the _same_ people for all that time, of course, but…”

“Half a millennium,” said Crowley, rather dismissively. “Yeah, ages.”

“It’s a long time for them,” Aziraphale argued. “A commitment. To contemplation, and learning, and… doing something good, no matter how much the world changes around them.”

“And to making money. And the rosary-handling, don’t forget.”

Aziraphale made a defeated, frustrated noise. It was at times like this that he wondered why he even bothered arguing with the Enemy. Why did it matter, whether Crowley understood him or not? There were points of understanding between them, of course, enough to have made their _arrangement_ practicable; and there were also plenty of points of philosophical disagreement, which usually got thrashed out over a bottle or two when they were both off the clock, to their mutual divertissement. But now and again Aziraphale felt there was a particular way that Crowley looked at him, keen-focused and smart-mouthed and on the verge of laughter, which felt altogether more personal. It was exhausting.

“Seems to me,” Crowley said, “that the humans have made all of this stuff very complicated, and quite a lot about human things, and not entirely about God. Which is why I’m going to focus on the looting in the memos. Trying to explain the nuances of it to Downstairs would take another five hundred years. But anyway, what are you doing for lunch?”

Aziraphale blinked. “This is an abbey, Crowley, you don’t _do_ anything for lunch, you just – eat lunch. In silence.”

“Sounds dull, but all right.”

“What? You obviously can’t join.”

“Why not?”

Aziraphale gaped rather uselessly, feeling slightly blindsided by this sudden conversational turn. “You’re not a brother here. And you’re literally shutting the place down as we speak. And this is a place of worship, and you’re a _demon_. And – since when do you even eat?”

Crowley shrugged. “Drink, then. We can catch up. Is this one of the monasteries with a brewery attached?” he asked, hopefully.

“No, it isn’t,” said Aziraphale, rather tersely. “And no thank you.”

“Well, fine,” said Crowley. Aziraphale felt very certain that although he couldn’t see them, Crowley was rolling his eyes.

“Yes, fine,” said Aziraphale. He suddenly felt very tired. “Under the circumstances, I think I’ll be departing, anyhow. So. I’ll leave you to it.” 

“All right,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale, quite put out by the whole thing, was just wondering whether he should bother going back inside for his travelling cloak or leave it for Master Ford to try on, when another one of The Boys appeared, carrying a large pile of books.

Aziraphale, rather wretchedly, said, “Why are _they_ being requisitioned?”

“The bindings are worth a bit of money,” said Crowley, absently.

Aziraphale tried not to take any of this as a personal slight. After all, Crowley really didn’t seem to have expected to find him here any more than he had expected to find Crowley. And all of this mess _did_ seem to be the humans’ fault. Aziraphale couldn’t very well hold Crowley responsible for the concept of the destruction of literature, although Crowley had doubtless turned in a report at some point claiming that he was. But the thing was, Crowley had an uncanny ability to pop up in situations where Aziraphale was feeling particularly off-balance – or perhaps it was that he had an uncanny ability to give Aziraphale the final, inconsequential-seeming nudge into instability. Anyway, whatever it was, he was very good at making Aziraphale upset, sometimes.

Aziraphale had been about to attempt to regain some ground by saying the most cutting thing he could think of – perhaps _You’re not at all kind, Crowley, do you know that?_ – when Crowley beckoned the book-laden Boy towards them.

“Ah, thank you,” Crowley said, and plucked _De Civitate Dei_ from the top of the pile. Aziraphale thought, for a horrible and unreasonable moment, that Crowley was going to tear the binding off right in front of him. When Crowley simply held the book out in his direction, Aziraphale was so surprised that he just stood still and stared at it.

“There you go,” said Crowley. He was grinning again. “It can’t be looting, I reckon, if you’re an angel. Fell off the back of the cart.” Aziraphale hadn’t moved. Crowley pushed the book into his hands, and said, “Start your own library, couldn’t you?”

Aziraphale gripped the book tightly in his fingers, and looked at Crowley, who was bouncing almost imperceptibly on the balls of his feet, his face bright with amusement. He felt a hot, unhappy swell of annoyance and embarrassment, and the inexplicable sense that Crowley had got one over on him.

Some inbuilt reflex in Aziraphale wanted to say ‘thank you’. Some other part of him wanted to drop the book on the ground and walk away without a word. But most parts of him didn’t want to drop the book on the ground.

“You’re not at all kind, Crowley, do you know that?” was what he said.

Crowley looked at him in a way that Aziraphale couldn’t even begin to unravel. “Thank you,” he replied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Abbot John Beche of St John’s Abbey, Colchester, was hanged for treason in 1539. The preamble to the 1536 Act for the Dissolution of the Lesser Monasteries has also been heavily abridged here, probably because Aziraphale only remembered the most interesting-sounding parts.


	2. Chapter 2

**1646**

“Now, hang on a minute,” said Aziraphale. He’d been advised to report to chapter secretary at the back of a loud and dysfunctional north London tavern – which was all very embarrassing in and of itself, because it wasn’t _generally_ the sort of place Aziraphale frequented, except of course on very special occasions (such as: this place did a very nice meat pie with things like herbs in it, which he felt had been under-represented in his diet since emigrating to London) and he was already being _quite_ brave - and here, after all that, blinking up at him from beneath a frankly extravagant hat, was Crowley. He looked delighted.

“Well I never!” said Crowley, tossing down his quill and making a horrid, entirely preventable mess of his parchment.

“Oh – dear – ” said Aziraphale, plucking the quill up. Ink had a terrible habit of _soaking in_ and Crowley’s handwriting was, by the looks of it, enough of a disaster by itself.

Crowley sat back in his chair, beaming, like they were nothing so much as two old friends meeting by chance. Really, they were business associates at very best. Though in all the mud and rubble of the last few years, even the Arrangement had gone largely forgotten. Civil war, blood in the fields, priest holes. _There I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers, so I took him by his left leg and threw him down the stairs._ Aziraphale hadn’t really wanted to know what Crowley was up to.

“Here,” he said.

Crowley grinned and took the quill back. It was large, extravagantly patterned and hand-carved; between that and the hat, Aziraphale was beginning to suspect that mid-17th century Crowley thought himself rather grand.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Pheasant.” 

“Yes,” said Aziraphale slowly. “It’s very nice. And I like the – hat.”

“Thanks. Like the little beard.”

Aziraphale touched it self-consciously. It was something of an experiment and he was rather sensitive about it. He couldn’t tell if Crowley was being sincere or not. “Thank you,” he said uncertainly.

“Well,” Crowley gestured. “Sit down, no need to stand around all day. Come to join the Levellers, have we?”

Aziraphale blanched. “Isn’t this supposed to be a discreet sort of affair?” he said quietly.

“Uhm,” said Crowley. “Which of us is In, and which of is stood there with a little beard trying to Get In?”

“Crowley, are you actually – ”

“Sit _down_ ,” he repeated, and finally Aziraphale drew out a stool and did as he was told. He had his back to the rest of the tavern, which was in something close to uproar, though this place almost always was. Dark, low-ceilinged, full of smoke and soot and _smells_. Why did burgeoning political movements always seem to thrive in mess? Yes, on something of a whim, Aziraphale _had_ come to join up – but as with the beard, he was rapidly losing faith in that decision. He nudged sawdust off the pale toe of his boot and crossed his arms, waiting.

“Now, come on,” said Crowley, sotto voce. “What are you _really_ doing here?”

Aziraphale spluttered. “Democracy!” he managed to spit out. “Religious tolerance! All men equal before God!”

“Oh, _yes_ ,” said Crowley, drawing the word out as though it had a funny taste. “Yes, I suppose.”

“I should ask, more to the point, what _you’re_ doing here.” 

Crowley rolled his shoulders in a grandiloquent shrug that managed to express very little while being extremely distracting. How did he make his human body move that way? Aziraphale was in the habit of avoiding even Maypoles out of pure physical awkwardness and a vague suspicion that somebody somehow might Catch On.

“Oh, you know,” Crowley said languidly. “Just pissing rich people off really. They hate this stuff.”

“Right,” said Aziraphale.

“Sowing discord, trying to get a bit of revolution going. Just chaos work, you get the idea. Nuts and bolts.”

“That seems terribly vague, Crowley.”

“Well,” said Crowley, looking increasingly defensive. “Well, it’s all got very complicated, this century, hasn’t it?”

“Good lord,” said Aziraphale. “But _hasn’t_ it?”

“I mean, bloody madness, isn’t it? Emphasis on the bloody.”

“I miss Queen Bess.”

“I miss the Black Death. Terrible smell of course, but you knew where you were, didn’t you?”

“Lots of praying,” said Aziraphale, sagely.

“Mary, two of the same here, will you?” said Crowley. “And I’ve just about had to _live_ in the East Midlands for work. Why have all those battles in Northamptonshire, I ask you. Have you been?”

“What?” said Aziraphale. He was still looking over his shoulder, trying to work out who Mary was and what had just happened.

“Northamptonshire? With the shoes. And Leicester’s no better. I mean, fair enough, don’t ruin a perfectly good field somewhere _nice_ , but the commute’s been murder. Where were you?”

“Me?” Aziraphale shook his head and tried to concentrate. “All over. But, er – York, mainly.”

“York! Lovely Minster.”

“Are you allowed to say that?” 

“Oh thanks,” said Crowley, moving his ink-stained papers out of the way to make space for two tankards of ale, which he took from the barmaid with a wink. Mary – for this, presumably, was she – had thick, muscular forearms, doubtless from ejecting her notorious clientele in the small hours of the morning. She nodded and withdrew, and Crowley held one of the tankards out.

Aziraphale, it seemed, was being forced, and not for the first time, to sup with the devil – or rather, not _the_ devil, obviously, but certainly a member of his senior management team. Still. He was exceedingly thirsty.

“Cheers,” he said quietly, because as everyone knows, God can’t hear you if you lower your voice.

“Cheers,” said Crowley, and they both drank. He put his tankard down and leaned across the table. “Look,” he said confidentially. “Are you sure all this is right for you?”

“All what?”

“Getting mixed up in,” and here Crowley gestured to the pub, himself, the pamphlets of incendiary political materials spread out before him. “You know. All this.”

Aziraphale had been wondering exactly that, but it didn’t always do to let on. “Well, you know,” he said vaguely. “Good to keep busy.”

“I mean it’s all very well about the tolerance stuff, but I rather thought you’d be off – you know – gathering. Re-grouping. With the Royalists.”

“Oh – please,” said Aziraphale. He wasn’t sure if this was a genuine question or a bait.

Crowley raised his eyebrows. “But angel,” he said slowly, seeming all of a sudden to have far too many teeth. “What about the Divine Right of Kings?”

“All right, Crowley, very good,” he said. “Now stop it, please, or you’ll give me indigestion.”

“Still into eating, then?”

“Still into _blending in_ and _taking my work seriously_ ,” snapped Aziraphale, with rather more force than he’d intended. Really, though, the Divine Right of Kings, for goodness’ sake. Crowley produced another of his little shrugs. Aziraphale said, “Sorry,” and took a rather abashed sip of his drink.

“I don’t mind,” said Crowley. “Always fun when you get all - ”

“What?”

“You know. Feather ruffle-y.”

“Feather ruffle-y?”

“Mother Goose.”

“ _Crowley_.”

“Listen, angel, have you had the meat pie here? It’s good. Even I quite like it.”

“No,” said Aziraphale. He hadn’t eaten here very many times, having so little cause to come all the way out to Isledon - or Islington, as people insisted on calling it these days - so it wasn’t too much of a lie and didn’t count. Not really.

Crowley looked at him. “Well,” he said slowly. “Why don’t I knock off early and we can have dinner? Reminisce about the relative peace of the 14th century.”

“Crowley, I came for _work_.”

“All right, all right. Keep the little beard on. Here, lean forwards.”

Not quite taking his eyes off Crowley, Aziraphale did as he was told. Crowley tucked a sprig of something into the brim of his hat. Aziraphale could smell crushed rosemary. Now he’d be thinking of that pie all evening. They were full of rosemary, too.

“There you go,” said Crowley, as Aziraphale straightened back up. “Welcome to the club. Here’s to democracy and all that stuff.” He lifted his glass and took a deep swill. Aziraphale knew he ought to join in, but didn’t; he just sat and watched Crowley’s Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.

“That’s all?” he said.

Crowley wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and grinned, but he looked vaguely irritated. “There’s forms and things, but I can do those. As you seem to have somewhere more important to be. I know all your vitals, after all.”

“I’m not sure that that’s what people call those.”

“Shame about dinner.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale vaguely. “Some other time, perhaps.”

“Well, you know where to find me.”

“Here or the East Midlands, by the sounds of it,” he said, and stood, with a rather mournful glance at his unfinished drink. “Thanks, anyway. Good luck with all the – you know. This.”

“Thanks, angel. You too.”

Out in the street, Aziraphale breathed deeply, enjoying the clean air after the miasma of the tavern. The day was darkening as he walked south-west, back through Clerkenwell and towards the city proper. A few streets away from the tavern, he stopped, plucked the sprig of rosemary from his hat, and crushed it beneath the toe of his boot.

It had been a silly idea, getting involved with politics. Anything that put him and Crowley on the same side just wasn’t worth the risk. He was beginning to suspect it might be best to keep a little more effectively out of human affairs and focus on the things he enjoyed. Wasn’t that better, after all, than the risk of making the wrong sort of difference?

He’d come across that rather nice Milton only last week, poems in English and Latin, he hadn’t even opened it yet. It was good to keep up his Latin. Perhaps on Saturday he could take it with him back up to Isledon for one of those meat pies. Was Saturday a good day? He should go whenever it seemed most likely Crowley would be elsewhere - to be safe.

Though if he ran into him by accident, Aziraphale supposed, that would be all right.


	3. Chapter 3

**1809**

The windows rattled in their casements, wind and rain beating itself against the walls of the house, but Aziraphale hardly noticed – caught up, as he was, in making his selection. 

“If you’ve everything you need, sir,” said Mr. Owen’s servant from the doorway.

“What?” said Aziraphale. He waved a hand. “Oh, yes.”

“Sleep well, then, sir.”

The servant withdrew, closing the door behind him, and Aziraphale took a copy of _Candide_ from the shelf of Mr. Edmund Owen’s rather fine library. Aziraphale was an overnight guest here for entirely professional reasons – but there was no reason he couldn’t enjoy himself in the meantime. And this first edition, with its rather lovely lilac cover, would be just the ticket.

Aziraphale held the book up to his nose and inhaled the scent of fresh, unturned pages. Bound in Paris – how he’d missed that city. Well, it would do him good to brush up on his French. He couldn’t hold a grudge forever.

With the book under one arm, Aziraphale picked up his tray of tea things, left the library and went down the corridor to the guest room, where a maid had already left his bag and lit a fire.

Mr. Owen’s house seemed purpose-built to hide inside and listen to a storm; the frontage was high-walled and foreboding, but inside it was full of homely comforts, despite its rather extravagant size. What family of four, Aziraphale had to wonder, could really use sixteen bedrooms? Still, as he was here for just one night, he felt lucky to have got the weather for it. He was having a wonderful holiday. 

Not that this _was_ a holiday. Aziraphale was here on business, a surprise guest after his Dreadful Accident, the staging of which had required Aziraphale to break and then covertly un-break the hind legs of a horse. In the morning, he had to engineer a remarkably complicated conversation with the master of the house, a local mill-owner, and convince him to stop cutting corners on military uniforms.

His mission of mercy, if it worked, would spare several hundred troops fighting on the peninsula; the soldiers, un-itched, could then go gladly into battle side-by-side, a merry band of brothers, etcetera, instead of being made so needled and irritated that they started fights with one another instead. Souls would be saved. Important work. But all tomorrow’s problem.

Aziraphale set his tea tray down, folded back the counterpane, and contemplated the absolute perfection of the moment. Thunder rumbling in the distance, steam rising from the teapot, and all around him, perfect stillness – every other creature in the huge house fast asleep. Nothing but the clock ticking on the mantel to disturb him.

And then the tapping started.

Aziraphale stood at the side of the bed, listening, with his head on one side, and wondered if perhaps he was imagining it. But on it went, a low, tapping, scratching sort of noise – perhaps a tree? The branch of some great tree scraping and scratching at his little alcove window. Aziraphale couldn’t see from here, so, steeling himself, he crossed the room to take a look, and had to swallow a scream. There was a face at the window.

It grinned at him.

“Good lord,” said Aziraphale, and rushed to lift the fastenings on the casement. A very damp Crowley watched him from outside; rain was running down his face and into his eyes, the ochre of egg yolk and, for once, completely visible without his glasses.

“Hello,” said Crowley, or presumably would have done if, at that moment, a huge gust of wind hadn’t carried his voice away. It tore the window out of Aziraphale’s grip and slammed it into the wall. There was weather everywhere: in Aziraphale’s eyes; in his hair; somehow, though he was facing forwards, down the back of his shirt.

“My dear,” he managed. “What’s _happened_ to you?”

“Can I come in?”

Aziraphale stood aside without a second thought, and a huge, dark snake crawled in. A few moments later, Crowley stood dripping on the rug, looking - with wet hair in his eyes and his clothes plastered to his body - half-drowned.

“Did you swim here?” said Aziraphale. Crowley rolled his eyes. “You know I can see you doing that?” he added.

Crowley’s hand flew to the side of his face and touched the space where his glasses should be. “Ugh,” he said, with feeling.

“Well, you’d better have some tea,” said Aziraphale, going over to the tray. “The fire’s lit if you want to get warmed up.”

“I want to dry my clothes,” said Crowley, “if you don’t mind. I think if I click my fingers I’ll still be – still be – well, I won’t be properly warm. Underneath.”

“Fine.”

Ignoring the damp and dissatisfied noises coming from the fireside, Aziraphale asked very nicely for there to please be a second cup, and reality obliged by putting one into his hand. “Thank you,” he said feelingly, to nobody in particular. There had been a time, a few centuries back, when he had said _amen_ , but these days it seemed better not to draw attention to himself.

Aziraphale turned round, holding two cups of tea - miraculously, the perfect temperature to be drunk immediately - to see that Crowley had dragged a chair up to the fireside. He was sat with his palms out towards the flames, light dancing on his hands, face and shoulders, making his skin look golden. His clothes were hanging on the back of the chair.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, who hadn’t entirely realised that this was what Crowley meant. “Um.”

Crowley looked up and smiled. “That for me?” he asked.

Aziraphale nodded and passed the teacup over. “Good lord, your hands are _freezing_ ,” he said, pulling another chair up to the fireside for himself. “I’ll have nightmares about them.”

“You don’t sleep.”

“You should _do_ something with them, they’re sucking all the heat out of the air.”

“Don’t fuss, angel.”

“Perhaps you ought to take a little brandy in that.”

Crowley’s slow smile suggested that this had already been taken care of. “Want one in yours too?”

Aziraphale didn’t answer. “Crowley,” he said, after a moment, “what on _earth_ are you doing here?”

Crowley’s expression faltered, but only for a moment. “Nothing. Business in the local area. Went a bit wrong.”

“But you knew I was going to be here.”

“Ye-es.”

“So why didn’t you just – ask me to do your thing too? No reason for us both to be in Yorkshire. Not that there’s anything wrong with - ”

“You hate weather,” Crowley interrupted. “You hate it happening to your clothes. You’d have made a face.”

“Well, then you could’ve done mine,” said Aziraphale, making a face. 

“Yes, just like that one.”

“I mean you could have done this – my salvation-ing.”

“Look, it all got sorted out rather late,” said Crowley irritatedly, tugging at his hair. “And then I was in a bit of a fix and I thought, who can help me out of this one? Stuck on the moors in the most extravagant storm I’ve ever seen?”

“ _I_ _sn’t_ it.”

“And I remembered you were about, and I thought – my old pal Aziraphale!” Aziraphale gave him a Look. “My old enemy Aziraphale!”

“You look like you’ve been in a river.”

“I was, briefly.” Crowley smiled. “You look like you’ve been in a library.”

“I was, briefly. How on earth can you tell?”

“You get this expression on your face, sort of…” Crowley did an impression: closed eyes, raised chin, a dreamy, beatific smile on his face.

“Hmm,” said Aziraphale. “Go on then.”

“Go on what?”

Aziraphale held out his teacup. “Let there be brandy,” said Crowley, with the twinkle of Bad Influence in his voice. Aziraphale gave the teacup a sniff.

“Blimey,” he said, but Crowley only shrugged. “So,” he went on. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

Crowley looked evasive. “It’s boring,” he said.

“Tell me anyway.”

“It’s stupid.”

“Well now I really want to hear.”

Crowley made a noise and shifted in his seat, rubbing his face with his hands. Aziraphale watched the musculature of Crowley’s back move under his skin to allow him to do this, and thought about how unfeasibly complicated human bodies were, and what a strange thing to have designed. He tried to think more about this – the metaphysical meaning and purpose of the bodies they were in – and less about the _fact_ of Crowley’s body, and its being so very suddenly here and undressed, and why he found that so completely alarming.

After a moment, he realised Crowley was looking at him like he was considering something.

“What?”

“Warm my hands up for me,” said Crowley.

“What?”

“My hands. They’re freezing. Warm them up for me and I’ll tell you what happened.”

Aziraphale opened his mouth to refuse, because he felt he ought to, but he couldn’t think of any good reason. Hereditary enemies they might be, but how would it cross any more of a line than the tea and the brandy and the fireside were already doing? Crowley’s hands really were frightful. It would be an act of mercy. “All right,” he said.

Crowley held out a hand and Aziraphale took it in both his own. He expected Crowley to make some joke, but he didn’t: he was watching Aziraphale with an unreadable expression on his face.

“Dreadful,” said Aziraphale. “Like a block of ice.”

“I know.”

“Go on then.”

“So,” said Crowley, and then, “urgh,” and then, “so - there’s this highway robber, right?”

“All right.”

“He lives round here, nice little village – and he’s rubbish.” Crowley spoke slowly, like he was dragging the words out of himself. “No aptitude for the work, he’ll be back in the mills by Christmas. But he’s got this cousin who’s been thinking about getting involved. And _he’d_ be brilliant. But he’s sort of looking for – thrills. Rather than money. Not that the money hurts. Anyway, but he decided to give it a go tonight, a one-off, with his cousin, and I came up with a way of getting robbed by them that would…”

He trailed off. Aziraphale rubbed his thumb absent-mindedly across the back of Crowley’s slowly-warming hand.

“Well, it was sort of an adventure. A river. Moonlight. The storm. Laid it on a bit thick but I think it worked. He’s going to be chasing that thrill for the rest of his life.” Crowley pulled his hand away and lifted the teacup to his mouth. “He’s gonna piss so many people off.”

“What an unusual temptation,” said Aziraphale. Crowley shrugged. “It’s sort of,” he went on, “I mean _for_ a temptation, it’s sort of – like a gift.”

They looked at one another. Crowley opened his mouth. He closed it again.

“Anyway, sounds fun,” said Aziraphale, feeling for some reason that he’d touched a nerve.

“Well, it was damp,” said Crowley. “How was yours?”

“Oh, very much in progress.”

Aziraphale drank his tea. The tot of brandy was unbelievably strong and made him feel like someone had set fire to his lungs. He was already warm from sitting up close to the fire; he wasn’t sweating, but he felt sort of how he imagined humans felt just before the sweating began. They both watched the flames for a bit, and then Aziraphale, not looking over, said, “Would you like me to warm the other one up?”

“I might go to bed, actually. I know you don’t usually go in for that sort of thing.”

“Oh.”

“But I’m exhausted. So I thought – if you don’t mind sharing...”

Aziraphale turned to look. The folded-back counterpane, the plump and downy pillowcases. He tried to compose his face, but it was too late. He could already feel Crowley’s eyes upon him.

“Look,” said Crowley.

“No, no, quite all right,” said Aziraphale. “You go ahead! I’ll sit up here.”

“Aziraphale.”

“Like you said, I don’t really go in for sleeping, and I’ve only just started my book!” There was an edge of panic in his voice. He tried to damp it down.

“You’ll be cold,” said Crowley, eyebrows raised.

“I’ll be fine!”

Crowley shook his head, and the fire went out, hissing softly, like someone had dumped a bucket of water on it. “Don’t be weird,” he said slowly. “Just - come to bed. You can sit there and read if you don’t want to sleep, but don’t – don’t – be weird.”

Aziraphale felt that he was breathing oddly, which was stupid, breathing being more of a sympathetic tic than a necessity. He could hear the edge in his voice, but he honestly didn’t think _weird_ was fair. Why was it weird to sit up and read? “That’s not weird,” he said aloud.

At this, Crowley stood up, and Aziraphale nearly pulled a muscle in his neck averting his eyes. He stared at his knees, listening to the sounds of Crowley moving away, pushing back the covers. When he looked up again, Crowley was in the four-poster with the blankets pushed down to his hips, watching him. Aziraphale waved, which was stupid, and immediately wished he hadn’t done it. 

“I really am tired,” said Crowley quietly. “I really am just going to go to sleep.”

“Of course,” said Aziraphale.

“And you’re – going to sit there. And read.”

“Oh yes.”

Crowley nodded. “If you change your mind,” he said slowly.

But Aziraphale shook his head, once, firmly, and picked up his book, feeling the tight little smile on his own face and hating it and not really knowing why it was there. “All fine!” he said cheerfully. “Goodnight!”

Aziraphale stared at the page for several minutes, eventually remembering to turn it. He felt Crowley’s eyes on him, and tried not to think about this, and tried not to wonder what, exactly, had happened. For the best part of the next hour, he felt as though Crowley was watching him – but when he finally forced himself to look, Crowley was definitely asleep, and probably had been for some time. 

He was sprawled in the bed with hair in his face and his eyes closed. It occurred to Aziraphale, oddly, that he had never really seen Crowley’s eyelids before. Why would he have done? What a stupid thing to think. But still, it was hard not to notice how different his face looked in repose: calm, peaceful, completely unaware of being watched. It wouldn’t have been fair to call Crowley self-conscious, but certainly he was aware of producing an effect on the people around him, and had always, at least as long as Aziraphale had known him, tried to control what that effect was. With his clothes, his way of walking, his way of being in the world. Aziraphale supposed that this was something to do with the things that people assumed about him, and wanting to be seen or not seen as those things. He supposed it was something to do with being a demon. But watching him like this, asleep and unaware, Aziraphale felt that he would have liked to have known Crowley – before. If only to see the difference.

He went back to his book.

Hours passed, and eventually the fireside stopped smoking. Aziraphale had been tempted to light it again, but for some reason, didn’t want to. He finished _Candide_ and, having nothing better to do, and not wanting to be caught wandering around in the middle of the night by one of the servants, started it again.

The storm blew itself out eventually, and after some hours a grey, sickly light began to come in through the window. Aziraphale’s back hurt from sitting up in the chair for so long. He kept shifting positions, trying to look at ease.

And then, sometime after the first light of dawn, Aziraphale heard birdsong, and realised he ought to wake Crowley up and send him away before someone came knocking with tea. No sooner had he thought this than Crowley sat bolt upright in bed, looking like he’d been shot out of something. His expression was confused and then, after a moment, irritated. Their eyes met.

“Good morning,” said Aziraphale. “Do you feel rested?” He was appalled to hear the same odd tight voice come out of himself as before, though moments ago he’d felt quite calm. 

“No,” said Crowley, dragging the vowel out. “Not really. Do you?” 

“I'm fine,” said Aziraphale, whose back was by now very sore.

Crowley nodded. Then, abruptly, he clambered from the bed – Aziraphale looked down at his book – and came over. He read the same line again, and a third time. He listened and tried to read as Crowley took his clothes from the back of the other chair and dressed.

_Mais, mon Révérend Père, dit Candide, il y a horriblement de mal sur la terre…_

“Right,” said Crowley. “Well, that’s that then.”

Aziraphale didn’t ask what was what, but he did look up and smile over-politely, like a salesman. 

“I’m going back to London. And then I’m going to bed. For ages.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale, “well - ” but Crowley had already reached the window and started fiddling with the catch.

“See you,” he said. Then he was gone.

Aziraphale sat there, wondering what, exactly, all of that had been about. After a while, he got up to close the window, and then got into bed. He drew the sheets about him. They smelled different. Something smoky, like peat. Perhaps of the river Crowley had been in last night.

As he sat there, no longer pretending to read, watching the sky get lighter and lighter while he waited for it to be breakfast time, Aziraphale wondered if he was supposed to be learning a lesson.


	4. Chapter 4

**1926**

Aziraphale smelled it before he saw it. In fact, he smelled it before he heard it, smell being the closest human sense into which the ethereal perception of an unknown and potentially dangerous object could be translated.

Tucked into an easy chair in the corner of the bookshop, Aziraphale raised his head from a first edition of _Wuthering Heights -_ inscribed _With thanks to my dear and most supportive friend Mr. A. Z. Fell, E. Bell -_ and sniffed once, delicately. There was something indefinably hellish about the smell, but it wasn’t the scent that generally seemed to accompany Crowley. Or at least not entirely that. Yes, there was the familiar backdrop of kindling, but there were harsher notes pushing their way to the forefront. Hot oil and molten metal and acrid black smoke. It smelled very… modern.

Then Aziraphale heard it. A roar like a loosed hellhound, a stuttering, purring growl that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, a quirk of the human body for which he hadn’t yet found any satisfactory explanation. Oh lord, Aziraphale thought, for a wild, uncomprehending moment. The end times are upon us, and Crowley, the bastard, hasn’t even tipped me the wink. 

The noise, which had increased in volume as the infernal being drew closer, suddenly stopped. The beast had reached the bookshop’s door.

Aziraphale, sighing, slipped an old theatre ticket into his book, stood up, and went out into the street. He arrived in time to see Crowley being disgorged from what appeared to be one of the creature’s several orifices. 

“Crowley,” he said, at a loss for anything else.

Crowley, who was for some reason wearing leather gloves, slammed the metal door of the contraption behind him.

“What on earth,” Aziraphale asked, “is that?”

“This?” said Crowley, with the sort of nonchalance that can only be affected at moments of high excitement. “It’s a car. Short for ‘carriage’. I came up with them. Well, I helped. Well, I hung around with Karl Benz for a while telling him how much I hated horses. Anyway. Isn’t it brilliant?”

Aziraphale, not for the first time, had cause to ponder the peculiarly human question of whether telling a lie in order to spare someone’s feelings was Good or Bad. “Gosh,” he said, employing the equally human trait of prevarication. “And what’s it for?”

“What’s it _for_? It’s for driving. It’s a horseless carriage. This,” Crowley said, patting the foremost protuberance of the object, “is the equivalent of seventy horses.”

Aziraphale supposed that one of the few things he would have been less pleased to discover on his doorstep would have been seventy horses.

“Anyway,” Crowley was saying, “I thought it was about time other people stopped being suddenly compelled to let me borrow theirs. What are you looking at it like that for? You live in the middle of a city. You’ve seen a car before.”

“I’ve been trying very hard to ignore them,” Aziraphale explained. He’d been doing very well.

Crowley smiled at him rather dangerously. “Bad luck. You’re about to get inside one.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Oh, come on, it’s fantastic. You’ll like it. It means we can go wherever we want.”

“I can already go wherever I want,” Aziraphale sniffed. “I’m a near-indestructible messenger of the Lord.”

“Yes, but now you can go where you want a lot faster.” 

“How fast?” 

“Hundred miles an hour, give or take?” 

Aziraphale wrinkled his nose. “ _Why_?”

Crowley made a vaguely confused noise. “Why _not_?” 

“Where could anyone possibly want to go so urgently?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Crowley raised his eyebrows. “How about your mother’s deathbed, just before she slips away? Or to a doctor, just in time to save your sick child? Or what about the port where the love of your life is leaving for the other side of the world, moments to spare before they’re gone forever?” Aziraphale looked at Crowley with faint disbelief, who smiled. “Yes, yes, I know, these are going to wreak havoc with the air quality, knock an awful lot of people over, and make everyone furious once there’s enough of them on the roads, but we’ve both got stakes in this one, if you ask me. Could go either way, depending how much weight each of us can be bothered to pull.”

Aziraphale stared at the car in dismay. 

“Looks like it might be a win for me, then,” said Crowley. “Oh, well. Get in, angel.”

“No, thank you.”

“But this is what cars are for. Driving other people around in.”

“I thought you said they were for saving the lives of your loved ones, et cetera.”

“Yes, but they’re mostly going to be for showing off.”

Crowley had opened the passenger side door of the car, and was leaning on it with both hands. He looked very proud of himself indeed.

“But why would you want to show it off to me?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley drummed his fingers absently against the top of the door. “Who else have I got to show it off to?” 

Aziraphale couldn’t come up with an answer to that. He had mercifully avoided having had to meet any of Crowley’s colleagues, but from the occasional glimpses he got from Crowley’s stories of Hell’s general attitude towards progress, it was possible they would like this horrific portent of the coming millennium even less than Aziraphale did. But Crowley… well, he often seemed to have friends, Aziraphale had noticed. Human friends. They were necessarily temporary, of course. But, as Crowley put it, he often _hung around_ with people, and not always for work. He seemed to simply _like_ some of them in a way that had always been slightly surprising. Aziraphale rather thought, not that he’d ever pointed this out to Crowley, that any level of fellow-feeling with one’s putative victims was probably a bit of a shortcoming in a demon. But anyhow, perhaps Crowley was going through a more solitary phase at the moment.

“Does it have a… safety harness?” Aziraphale asked. 

“No,” said Crowley, some amusement in his voice. 

“If you discorporate me,” Aziraphale said, “I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Well, obviously,” Crowley said. He pulled the door all the way open. “Your carriage awaits.”

The carriage, once Aziraphale was inside it, smelled even more strongly of leather and metal, and something strange and bitter that caught in the back of his throat. “What _is_ that?” he asked. 

“Petrol,” Crowley said, now in the seat beside him, slamming the door, and inhaling dramatically. “It’s great. I love it. Good for the lungs. Right.” He ran his gloved hands over the wheel in front of him, a gesture that made Aziraphale look abruptly out of the window. “Where to?” 

“I didn’t want to go anywhere,” Aziraphale reminded him. “I was reading.”

“Were you? I’d never have guessed,” said Crowley. “Well, look. How about we just go for a spin, and then I’ll take you somewhere for a drink?” 

“A drink,” repeated Aziraphale. This sounded reasonable. They had drunk together often enough.

Nonetheless, Aziraphale had an odd, curling little feeling somewhere inside him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Some hundreds of years ago, he probably would have interpreted it as the sense that he was being led into a trap, but today, he wasn’t so sure. Oddly enough, Crowley didn’t really go in for that sort of thing.

But Crowley’s question hung expectantly over them both - and Aziraphale realised it really was a question, and one that relied on his answer.

“Yes, all right,” Aziraphale said, after a moment. “Let’s do that.”

Crowley’s mouth quirked upwards. 

A spin, it turned out, was a new slang term for a near-death experience. Aziraphale spent much of the next twenty minutes with his eyes shut very tight, one hand planted desperately against the metal roof above him and one gripping the handle of the door, as they hurtled through a startled circuit of inner London. 

“Isn’t there a speed limit?” Aziraphale asked, letting one eye open just a little.

“Technically, yes,” said Crowley, veering around a corner on what seemed to be a complete whim. “What they don’t seem to have thought through, though, is that if you break it, they can’t go fast enough to catch you.”

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. He felt he ought to object to this, but the last corner had made his insides do something so unexpected that he had decided to stop talking. Since angels weren’t susceptible to human illnesses, and could also dissipate an excess of alcohol at will, no angel had ever actually experienced the sensation of queasiness before. But since being tossed around inside a hot metal death trap at ninety miles an hour was far from anything the Almighty could have imagined when forming Her divine creations, Aziraphale had no inbuilt defence mechanism against carsickness, and was far too taken aback by the whole thing to try and develop one in the moment.

After what felt like eternity, the car screeched to a halt. Aziraphale, quietly thanking God for his preservation for the first time in quite a while, cracked open his eyes.

“That was fun,” said Crowley, apparently without irony. He stretched his hands, flexed his fingers, and then put the tip of his index finger in between his teeth, loosening the end of his glove to pull it off, at which Aziraphale got immediately out of the car.

They were on Regent Street, which they could have walked to in less time than they’d spent on the spin, but Aziraphale hadn’t quite got the strength back to point this out. Besides, Crowley had emerged into the street too, and was tipping his head in the direction of an alleyway. “Shall we?” he said.

Aziraphale followed him into the darkness of the little side-street, and then through a door and down a steep staircase, leading underground. Bright, rather abstract paintings hung on the walls as they descended, and soon they emerged into a large, loud, glittering basement. The walls down here were painted in the same excitable colours as the pictures on the stairs, and intricately-sculpted pillars held up the low ceiling. It was something like an interpretation of various civilisations of the ancient world as realised by people who had never actually been there, which, Aziraphale supposed, couldn’t be held against them. The sconces on the walls were full of candles, music cascaded from a band in one corner, and lively chatter came from the people seated and standing everywhere else.

Crowley, who had been exchanging words with a woman who was greeting new arrivals, kissed her rather politely on the knuckles of one hand, turned back to Aziraphale, and smiled.

“What do you fancy?” he asked.

Aziraphale bit at his lip, and wondered why he felt suddenly so warm and restless and - uneasy. Perhaps it was something about the descent that had unnerved him, a natural disinclination to follow a literal agent of Hell into the bowels of the earth. Or perhaps it was the particular mood of this place - which, like every establishment of the past six millennia patronised by wealthy young people, had a vivacity to it that was difficult to ignore. There were groups clustered around the polished table-tops, friends laughing and eating and drinking together. But the majority of people in this club were in pairs. Leaning towards one another as they spoke, exchanging bright and somehow private glances over the top of their drinks, playing an ancient game of mutual understanding.

Aziraphale and Crowley had been occasionally drinking together for an awfully long time, of course. But there had always been a sense of convenience about it, of he and Crowley taking a mug or a glass or a bottle together because they had happened to run across each other, or because they had business to discuss. Aziraphale supposed he had actually quite liked the sense of _otherness_ that he and Crowley shared in those places. The two of them in the middle of so many people - in a crowded tavern, or a high-ceilinged palace, or around a camp fire - watching the humans, and wondering what it must be like to live so fleetingly, and to cram so much feeling into that short time. And then shrugging, and drinking along with them.

So perhaps what was making Aziraphale’s skin prickle was what it could maybe, possibly mean - no, what it absolutely did mean - for Crowley to have brought him to this place, to sit amongst these human couples, not out of convenience but on purpose. And what it meant for Aziraphale to have agreed to come. Because when Crowley had said _a drink_ , earlier, Aziraphale had known, hadn’t he, what that meant. The way humans used it to mean - something else.

“Do you know what,” Aziraphale said, wishing his voice didn’t sound ridiculously strange and thin, “I think maybe I’d like to go home, after all.”

This was so very silly, considering they had only just arrived, that Aziraphale expected Crowley to argue with it, either in earnest or for show. He was beginning to line up his defence of excuses: lingering nausea from the car ride, concern that he might have forgotten a scheduled performance review with Gabriel that very evening, aesthetic opposition to the rather raucous music. But Crowley, who was still looking at him, didn’t say anything for a moment. He swallowed. Aziraphale wished, suddenly, that he could see his eyes. 

“All right,” Crowley said. “If that’s what you want.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, feeling horribly awkward. “Please.”

They climbed back up the stairs, out of the smoke and the candlelight, and into the gathering dusk of the evening. Crowley didn’t say anything as they walked back along the little cul-de-sac, and Aziraphale rather wished he would speak, even though he wasn’t sure he would have known how to answer. 

“I’ll drop you back,” Crowley did say, as they came back out onto Regent Street. “If you like.”

Aziraphale would have much preferred to walk, but he felt somehow that it would be unkind of him to do so. “Thank you,” he said, instead.

The journey back was much quicker, being significantly more direct, although, Aziraphale thought, not taken at quite the same speed. He kept his eyes closed nonetheless. He was being silly, really. He oughtn’t have asked to leave. This could have been like so many normal, tipsy, nobody’s-looking-if-we-don’t-cause-any-trouble nights that he and Crowley had spent together over the years. But now he’d made it weird.

When they pulled up outside the bookshop, Crowley didn’t get out of the car, but turned to him in his seat.

“I’ll see you when I see you, then?” Crowley asked.

“Undoubtedly.”

Crowley nodded. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, again, because he didn’t know what else to say, and then got out of the car, and watched Crowley disappear in a cloud of black smoke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bar in this chapter is based on [The Cave of the Golden Calf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cave_of_the_Golden_Calf), despite the fact that this club only existed for a couple of years in the 1910s. However, a bit like Aziraphale [having kept the cartoon cinema at Victoria station open](https://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/post/187597830776/hello-mr-gaiman-i-hope-you-are-having-a-good) for Crowley's benefit, I suppose Crowley might have managed to keep this club trading for an extra decade or so, with the vague idea that Aziraphale might like it.


	5. Chapter 5

**1941**

“Two sazeracs,” said the barman, putting a pair of amber-coloured drinks on the table between them.

“Lovely stuff, Pete, thank you,” said Crowley, pushing one of the glasses towards Aziraphale. There was a razor-thin twist of lemon on the ice. “Pete’s amazing,” he said. “This’ll blow your head off.”

“What a thought,” said Aziraphale.

Pete clapped Crowley on the back and receded into the darkness of the bar. Like most of the places Aziraphale had ever been with Crowley, it was low-ceilinged and full of atmosphere. All around the walls, attractive and dangerous-looking people were flirting with one another, though their table at the back felt dark and private - like they could watch everyone else without being observed. Aziraphale suspected that it was the great trick of bars like this to make every table of customers feel that way. He respected a good magic trick.

“Chin chin,” said Crowley, raising his glass.

“Chin chin,” said Aziraphale, raising his own.

They clinked glasses and drank. The cocktail was punishingly strong; Aziraphale felt the burn of it all the way down his throat.

After they’d trekked their way across the ruins of the bombed church, Crowley had offered Aziraphale a lift home. He would have accepted, only it hadn’t seemed quite polite - after all the effort Crowley had gone to. So he’d said, “At least let me buy you a drink, to say thanks,” and now here he was, in this shady bar full of cigarette smoke, dark corners and petty criminals who insisted on calling Crowley ‘Tony’.

“Don’t look so nervous, angel,” said Crowley. “This place is all right.”

“I’m not nervous,” Aziraphale said prissily, though that wasn’t strictly true. He’d had the strangest rolling, thudding sort of feeling in his middle for some time – since, in fact, they’d left the church – which might very well be nerves. He’d never felt anything like it before, not being blessed, as it were, with a huge range of physical sensations. Perhaps it was some kind of human-sympathetic nervous reaction, a physical expression of the shock. They had been in an explosion, after all.

“Sure,” said Crowley, sitting back in his chair. He recrossed his legs and smoothed the crease in his trousers, looking every inch the spiv, in keeping with the rest of the clientele.

Aziraphale leaned forwards. “It is absolutely packed with criminals, though, isn’t it,” he said quietly.

“Oh, none of this lot gets up to anything that’d keep you awake at night,” said Crowley. “Not that you sleep,” he added.

This seemed fair. Over the years, Aziraphale had come to associate these kinds of harmless, low-level crooks with Crowley. Under-the-counter dealers, black marketeers, cheap pornographers; they made for a cheap, rather grubby crowd, but it was hardly murder, barely even extortion.

Aziraphale wasn’t sure when he'd stopped noticing the lack of magnitude in all of Crowley’s temptations. There was an understatedness about his work, a tendency to merely nudge people who were already headed in that direction, _plenty enough choosing our side as it is, free will etcetera, let ‘em go at their own pace I say._

There was a gentleness about it that tonight, after everything, after the surprising grandness of Crowley’s demonic miracle – it felt significant, or something. Even though the miracle had, Aziraphale had to note, involved the full and thorough destruction of a place of worship. Still. To put it another way, he wondered, not for the first time, if he ought to be learning a lesson.

“So,” said Crowley, rolling his glass. “How’s the Business of Literature?”

Three sazeracs later, Aziraphale was feeling loose and expansive (“Of course,” he’d said, after the second drink, “that funny taste is _absinthe_ ,”), while around them, the bar had gone from atmospheric to raucous.

It was late, the sirens had stopped and all the petty criminals had lived to see another sunrise. Up at the bar, three men were serenading Pete the barman in a surprisingly successful and slightly aggressive close harmony, though Aziraphale couldn’t make out the words over the chatter. Closer by, a little group was playing an intense-sounding game of poker. A woman in dark lipstick was raking it in, her distinct, hooting laugh coming every fifteen minutes or so at the end of another successful round.

“No,” Aziraphale said patiently. “Rebecca’s the name of the dead wife.”

“What are you talking about? Rebecca’s the main – the main character.”

“Crowley…”

“Joan Fontaine! The one with the nice nose and the sister.”

“What sister?”

“She was in _Gone With the Wind_.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“The sister.”

“Whose sister?”

“Rebecca’s.”

“But Rebecca isn’t _in_ the film.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“And which one of us has read the book?” Aziraphale said crossly. It was difficult, as it often was, to be sure if Crowley was winding him up or genuinely confused.

“So who’s Joan Fontaine in it then?”

“Mrs. de Winter.”

“And who’s Rebecca?”

“The first one. The dead wife.”

“So why isn’t the film called after Joan Fontaine?”

“If you didn’t see it, why on earth are we even - ”

“I did see it,” Crowley interrupted, laughing open-mouthed, and then he stopped and looked up. “Marcy!” he said.

Aziraphale turned round. The glamorous woman from the poker game was standing at their table, absent-mindedly folding damp banknotes into her pocketbook. “Tony,” she said warmly, in a rich American accent. “I knew it was you.”

 _To-o-ony_ , Aziraphale mouthed, but Crowley either didn’t notice or ignored him. He stood to kiss the woman on both cheeks.

“What a nice surprise,” he said. “Marcy, this is an old friend of mine, Mr. Fell.”

“Charmed,” said Aziraphale politely, taking the hand she offered him. She had a very symmetrical face.

“You too,” she said, then turned her attention back to Crowley. “Can I join a moment?”

 _May I_ , Aziraphale thought mutinously, then felt extremely impolite.

“Please do,” said Crowley, reaching over to the next table to drag across a stool.

Marcy sat down, smoothing her dark skirt over her knees, which, like the rest of her, were objectively very nice. “So good to run into you,” she went on. “You know I’m just in town til the end of the month?”

“Luck of the devil,” Crowley grinned. “Marcy, darling, is this business or pleasure?”

“Oh,” she said, with a glance at Aziraphale. “Business.”

“I’ll,” said Aziraphale, then stopped. He’d stood up too fast and his chair had made a noise. He hadn’t exactly planned to stand up, but now he was standing and drunk, and had better go somewhere. He felt some silly combination of irritated and proprietary and embarrassed, and Crowley had, he was almost certain, wanted him to leave, hadn’t he? Anyway, now he was in the toilets and he didn’t have to use the facilities, ever, obviously, so this was all very silly.

The bathroom was just as dimly lit as the rest of the place, though not as smoky. Aziraphale ran cold water into the sink and washed his hands and face. His skin felt hot to the touch and there was still that strange sensation: a thumping, thudding, like waves crashing against the inside of his ribcage. He covered his chest with his palm, watching his own face in the mirror.

“Good lord,” he said out loud.

“You talking to me?” said a voice from the cubicle.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “No. Sorry.”

There was no mistaking it: his entirely decorative heart was pounding in his chest. It had no need to, physiologically speaking, and as far as he could recall it had never done so before. But there it was. “How ridiculous,” he said.

Aziraphale met his own reddened eyes in the mirror above the sink and tried to forget about his idiot heart, and its little performance of human feeling. It had been going ever since they left the church. _Since the blast_ , Aziraphale thought, but he was too drunk to be so self-deceiving. No. Not quite since then.

Perhaps he ought to sober up. The thought of going back in complete control of his faculties was tempting – as was the prospect of simply going home. If the toilets had had windows, he might have considered escaping through one. Not seriously – it would have been rude – but still, the thought of going back to sit at the table with Marcy and Crowley and attempt a normal human conversation was exhausting. What did he know about normal humans? Unlike Crowley, _clearly_ , he kept his distance.

Aziraphale left the toilets as drunk as he’d entered them. Sobering up was just too impolite.

Crowley was alone again at their table, poking the ice in his empty glass. He looked up and smiled. “I was worried you’d gone out the window,” he said.

“There wasn’t a window,” said Aziraphale, and sat down, folding his hands across his knees. Perhaps not the politest answer he could have chosen. “Finished your work?”

“Yes,” said Crowley, drawing the word out. He was watching Aziraphale very closely. “One more for the road, or…?”

“They’ve already rebuilt that church once you know,” said Aziraphale. “Twice, if you count the fact it used to be a monastery.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Shame.”

“It is a shame. I rather liked it.”

“Well, anyway,” said Crowley. “You’re welcome.”

Aziraphale laughed, and there was an odd sensation in his throat, a pressure, that made his laugh sound high and strange. “Yes, all right,” he said. “One more.”

Two hours and several drinks later, they said goodnight to Pete on their way out of the door. He waved. It seemed a lifetime since they’d arrived, and the route here – a series of winding backstreets – was only dimly memorable now, although Aziraphale remembered this bit because it had been strange. They’d come down a staircase, through a bit of scrubland and up another staircase.

“I remember this,” he said, stopping in the yard between buildings.

“Well done,” said Crowley, stopping too. “But can you remember how to get out?”

For a moment both of them stood there in the dark. The sky was full of stars.

“No,” said Aziraphale.

He could feel it still: the gratitude pushing at his throat, its grip on him, and not only gratitude. In the darkness, he reached out, and his hand found Crowley’s own. “Thank you,” he said. Some distant part of him knew he was drunk and holding Crowley’s hand, which was ridiculous, but for once he was utterly inside his own body, inside the rolling of that stupid, insistent heartbeat, and the sound of Crowley breathing in the dark.

Aziraphale pulled on their joined hands and Crowley stepped towards him. He remembered, a little hysterically, that Crowley could probably see fine out here - but for him it was all outlines, the sweet smell of the cocktails on Crowley’s breath, and body-heat, and the racing-flooding feeling in his chest.

“Go on, then,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale wanted to say, _Go on what?_ But there didn’t seem much point pretending. He shook his head, suddenly unable to do more, and closed his eyes. Crowley’s free hand moved against him, under his jacket, holding his waist, and Aziraphale dropped his head against Crowley’s shoulder. His clothes smelled of smoke from the bar, and exploded church, and something darker, more ashy and far more familiar, which he realised must be the smell of Crowley’s skin.

“I can’t,” he said quietly.

“Aziraphale.”

“I _can’t_.”

“Eight million people,” said Crowley quietly, breath against Aziraphale’s ear. “There’s eight million people in this city, in the middle of a war. Most of them are praying to God to save them or their kids or their pets, and - and then another few hundred thousand working out what they can get from it. Both our sides are busy. I can honestly say, right now, nobody cares what we do. Nobody’s watching.”

Aziraphale shook his head against Crowley’s shoulder. Every muscle in his body thrummed with tension, the perfect median tension of doing and not doing, becoming and its shadow. To be or not to be. _Buck up, Hamlet_.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale, still with his eyes shut, felt Crowley lift their joined hands and press the back of Aziraphale’s to his mouth. He said nothing. He did nothing. Crowley tilted Aziraphale’s hand about and kissed his palm, and then his wrist; the heat of it was in every corner of his body, and it was something like being suffused with heavenly light and something like its opposite.

“If you tell me to stop,” said Crowley, “I’ll stop. But I think – I do think you - ”

Aziraphale lifted his head and pressed his mouth to Crowley’s, if only to stop him talking.

It was like he’d always thought it to be - not that he’d thought about this, of course, but still. It was exactly like he hadn’t thought it would be, and lovely, the surprising softness of Crowley’s mouth not a surprise at all; the little sound he made as, still holding Aziraphale’s hip, he nudged him backwards. He walked them both two steps until Aziraphale’s back hit the brick wall of the courtyard.

“Stop,” said Aziraphale. “You have to stop.”

Crowley stepped back as quickly as if he’d been burned. Eyes adjusting to the dark, Aziraphale could see that Crowley had his hands up, like he was being arrested in a silent film, and could dimly make out the angle of his head, looking away.

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said quietly, wretched, casting around for some proper explanation. What, in a few words, could take in all of it? Divine purpose, and the vault of Heaven, and celestial unbecoming. How could he explain himself without making it obvious that he was choosing something Crowley had already lost? “I just,” he added dumbly. “Can’t. You know.”

“No,” said Crowley, his voice thick and strange, and Aziraphale wasn’t sure if this was disagreement or assent. “Of course. No.”

They were quiet and so were the maze of streets around them. London, after hours of bombs and caterwaul, was sleeping. It was a strange, dark quiet, in the middle of their city, in the middle of a war. “Come on, then,” said Crowley. “This way.”

Aziraphale felt Crowley move away, and followed him - up an outdoor staircase, through a door and back onto the street, where they stopped again and looked at one another. Aziraphale could see a small smile on Crowley’s face. “It’s okay,” he said.

Aziraphale shook his head; a gesture that, he had to admit, was hard to read. He wasn’t sure what it meant himself. “Goodnight, then,” he said.


	6. Chapter 6

**1973**

The music was too loud. Aziraphale could feel it in his ribs. The actual bones of his actual ribs were vibrating, which he hadn't previously known was a thing that could happen, and now that he did, he wondered why anyone would choose to experience such a sensation.

Crowley, moving ahead of him through the crowd, turned back to grin at him, strands of long hair plastered to his face in the heat and crush. Aziraphale said, “My ribs,” and Crowley, who presumably couldn’t hear, gave him a thumbs up.

Aziraphale wasn’t entirely sure how he’d ended up agreeing to this. Less than an hour ago, he’d been minding his own business at the bookshop, whiling away a perfectly nice evening on a crumpet/Le Carré combination that was so absorbing he hadn’t even noticed the bell go above the shop door, and had jumped out of his skin when Crowley said, “Is it a good one?”

It had been late even then, certainly late to be manning the desk, but sometimes Aziraphale felt like starting late and keeping open longer. The odd hours suited him, tending, as they did, to confuse and outfox potential customers.

“You scared the life out of me,” said Aziraphale, and then, “Oh – good lord, Crowley.”

Crowley grinned. He was holding a bottle of champagne under one arm, wearing a leopard print coat with no shirt underneath, and what looked very much like a velvet choker. There was _glitter_ on his cheeks. His trousers were skintight, potentially even leather. Aziraphale shook his head. The 1970s didn’t seem to be doing much for anyone else, every second customer of his had grown an ill-advised moustache, and here was Crowley going around like – whatever this was. It was a personal affront.

“It’s glam, angel. It’s called glam.”

“Hmm,” said Aziraphale, suddenly feeling every one of his six thousand years.

“Here,” said Crowley, holding up the champagne, which looked very inviting, actually. “Glasses?”

“Have you had good news?”

“No? Do I need a reason? Is it not a Friday night?”

“You don’t have a job.”

“We both have a job! The same job!”

“Certainly not the same – and anyway, we don’t get weekends off.”

Crowley shook his head in disbelief. “Just get some glasses, will you?”

Aziraphale did as he was told. Crowley pushed a sweep of hair out of his eyes, popped the cork and poured, rocking his weight from foot to foot as he did so, as though he was swaying in time to music. _Okay_ , Aziraphale thought, _I’ll bite_.

“What on earth have you been doing, got up like that?”

“I was at a gig with some friends,” said Crowley, handing over a drink. “Around the corner from here. Very loud, you’d have hated it. Thought I’d pop in while I was nearby.”

It had been a long time, nearly a century, since Aziraphale had made an effort to maintain relationships with anyone besides Crowley. Humans all died so fast, it was depressing. He knew it was different for Crowley - temptations were so often about narrative, they benefited from groundwork, context - and he tried to keep quiet when Crowley talked about people he didn’t know and wouldn’t meet, though some little part of him heaved with petty jealousy to hear Crowley call them _friends_.

“Was it fun?”

“It was. Very fun.”

“And really as loud as all that?”

Crowley grinned again, wolf-like. “It really was _very_ loud.”

“Well. Nice of you to drop in on your way home.”

“Oh, I’m not going home,” said Crowley, drinking fast. “There’s an afterparty next.”

Aziraphale nodded but said nothing. He was unconsciously matching Crowley’s pace, drinking too fast, and bubbles had gone up his nose.

“Come with me,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale nearly spat out his champagne.

“I’m serious. Come out with me. The 70s are fun!”

“You just said I’d hate it.”

“The gig, maybe, but this is just – a bar.”

“A bar?”

“Well, a club. Look, yes, you might hate it, but isn’t it worth checking? At least once every half a century?” With that, he leaned over the desk to refill Aziraphale’s glass, and there was something coquettish in the motion that Aziraphale found distracting. He felt the ghost of a flutter in his stomach, a shadow beating of his shadow heart, which seemed to say: so, this again. The dark room. Strangers.

After a moment, Aziraphale shook his head. “Don’t be silly,” he said.

“I just think we’d have fun, that’s all. We have fun, don’t we?”

“This is very nice of you,” said Aziraphale, with a gesture that took in the bottle, the glasses, the glitter on Crowley’s face. “But honestly, it’s just – too, _too_ absurd. I’m sorry to rain on your parade, but there it is.”

Thirty minutes and one bottle of champagne later, Aziraphale was watching Crowley join the queue at the bar in a bass-thudding, red-tinged basement of a place that had been only six or seven minutes’ walk from the bookshop, but a lifetime away in every sense that mattered. Crowley got served unbelievably fast, pissing off all the people who were waiting, which presumably counted as both a professional and personal victory. He passed over a tumblerful of pale liquid with a single ice cube floating in it. White wine, or what passed for it in a place like this. The floor was sticky. It was packed.

“Everyone’s snorting things off each other,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley laughed in a way that was actually rather irritating.

Aziraphale, who’d tried various substances at his gentleman’s club in Portland Place, due to a combination of social awkwardness and judgement errors, wanted to say: _Don’t look at me like I’m a hundred and you’re a hot young thing._ After all, who had slept through most of the 19th century while Aziraphale had been learning to dance and taking opium? The fact he hadn’t done it on purpose was irrelevant now. The point was, he had done it, and Crowley could just shut up.

He said nothing of course, but it was tempting, as it always was, to shock Crowley just a little. It made his eyebrows do such strange and charming things. But Aziraphale usually decided it was better, overall, to maintain certain standards - in case he needed them later.

“Want to dance?” asked Crowley, nodding his head at the mass of people taking up most of the room.

“No,” said Aziraphale, who did, but was still faintly annoyed, and only knew one dance anyway.

Crowley looked at him. “Let’s go and sit down then,” he said.

Back they went into the corridors; the whole place seemed to be mostly corridor, which coincidentally was how Aziraphale had always pictured Hell. Crowley led the way again. Aziraphale sipped his wine as they went, and made eye contact with strangers in brief and interesting bursts. He’d sort of imagined he would be Looked at here, that people would sense he was out of place and out of his depth and Look at him accordingly, but everyone seemed too wrapped up in whatever they were doing and whoever they were doing it with.

Crowley stopped outside a little dark room and said, “In here.”

There was a man in his forties leaning against the doorway, dressed like Crowley, with his arm around a teenage girl’s waist. Aziraphale leaned in and hissed, “She’s too young for you,” with such authority that the man immediately let go.

Crowley, who seemed not to have noticed this, led the way into a room that was darker and quieter than the others. It was shadowy and mysterious, like parties used to look when they had all been candle-lit, which Aziraphale thought was charmingly retro. This music was still too loud, but somehow, in its degree of intensity, quieter, which was a relief. Nobody was dancing and everybody was smoking. The two of them sat on a small corner sofa with their knees touching, and Aziraphale said, “Much better.”

“Cheers,” said Crowley, and clinked their glasses.

“What’s this playing now?”

“T. Rex,” said Crowley.

“Ah,” said Aziraphale. He felt increasingly bad for palaeontologists. He’d met a few and they’d all been very nice; it seemed a shame for them to be the butt of such a great cosmic joke.

“Penny for them?”

“I was just thinking about dinosaurs.”

Crowley laughed. “Mean trick, that. But it’s on them for believing it. I mean. Giant monsters. Come on.”

It was still sufficiently loud that they had to lean in close to one another to hear. When Crowley spoke, Aziraphale could feel his breath on the shell of his ear. Then Crowley leaned away and shouted, “Ed!”

Ed, whoever he was, was standing over them. He was very thin and grinning like a wolf. He leaned down to kiss Crowley on both cheeks, then said something in his ear that Aziraphale couldn’t catch. Crowley laughed. Ed was holding a bottle of some dark spirit and tipped a measure of it into Crowley’s cup.

“Do you want some, darling?” he said, looking at Aziraphale.

“Oh, well go _on_ then,” said Aziraphale, finishing his wine. He wished he hadn’t said it quite so much like he was being offered a second sandwich at afternoon tea.

Ed free-poured a generous measure, then leaned down, kissed Aziraphale on the cheek, and left.

“That was, er – Ed,” said Crowley, who seemed to feel that no explanation would really be sufficient.

“One of yours.”

Crowley looked uncomfortable behind his sunglasses. “Unfortunately, probably, yes.”

The spirit was dark rum, and burned. Aziraphale didn’t mind. “Why do you like all this, Crowley?”

Crowley looked surprised. “What do you mean?” he said.

“I mean, why do you come to places like this? What’s it for?”

“For? Work, angel.”

“But it isn’t, is it? You like it. All the clothes and the - loud noises - and the temporariness of it. You like the dressing up.”

“I like people.”

“You _do,_ don’t you?” said Aziraphale, going too far in trying to hide his interest and ending up sounding like he was discussing an unusual coffee preference at a dinner party. (Aziraphale thought briefly but longingly of After Eight chocolates. A sign, if he’d needed one, that this sort of place would never be for him.)

“They just have so little time,” said Crowley, shaking his head. “I mean, after six thousand years, I still haven’t ever - played golf. Or drunk dubonnet.”

Aziraphale made a face. “Don’t bother,” he said.

“But they’ll never get to do almost _anything_. In fifty years, you’ll still have your bookshop and half the people in this room will be dead.”

“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, who didn’t quite understand the turn the conversation had taken.

“No, no, I just mean - the way they all throw themselves at the tiny little bit of life they get. It’s good.”

“Good?”

Was Crowley blushing? “I should have just said I liked the music.”

There was a strand of hair stuck to Crowley’s lips. In a gesture that was half instinct and half intention, Aziraphale reached up and pushed it out of his face, fingertips brushing Crowley’s cheekbone slightly. In the heat and crush, their knees were touching, and Aziraphale could feel the shock of tension that went through Crowley’s entire body. There was an expression on his face that could only be described as panic.

“Right, then,” said Aziraphale.

“Right,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale felt hot and awkward. There was glitter on his fingertips. “I suppose, really, I should go home,” he said. “Let you - get on. And it’s late. You know.”

Crowley nodded. “Right,” he said again, rabbit-in-headlights expression still plastered across his face.

“Unless you want a cup of tea?”

“I’d better,” said Crowley, nodding a head at the party. “Work, you know,” and Aziraphale said, “No, absolutely, of course,” but didn’t move, so for a moment they just said looking at one another.

Aziraphale wondered what, if anything, he was supposed to do. Then Crowley said, “Goodnight,” and that was that. Aziraphale, having no other option, left.

Within ten minutes, he was back at the bookshop with the kettle boiling, barely able to hear it over the loud-music fuzz in his ears. It made him feel strange and bubble-wrapped, like he was moving underwater. There was glitter, he noticed, on the kettle’s handle, and on the side, and on the tap. How had it got absolutely everywhere so quickly?

“Damn bloody Crowley,” said Aziraphale, ignoring the rolling-flooding feeling in his chest that had come and gone, at odd moments, for thirty years. Imbecile heart, pointlessly beating.

Thank God that, based on his track record, Crowley was bound to go off glam soon and find something else to enjoy. Perhaps, if Aziraphale was lucky, Crowley would even grow one of those terrible moustaches that were going around. It would be for the best, all things considered.


	7. Chapter 7

**The present day**

Aziraphale was drunk. It was fantastic.

He and Crowley had been at the Ritz for hours, a whole series of bookings having been miraculously cancelled one after the other, because it was nice to be there, and they were comfortable, and Aziraphale thought they deserved a bit of a treat, to be honest. In fact, they’d ended up having dinner there as well, or at least Aziraphale had. Crowley had just moved on to spirits and three more coffees.

It was a warm night as they stepped out onto Piccadilly, bright and loud along the shop-fronts. Goodness, look at it: the world. They’d toasted it several times, in the end, but Aziraphale was still slightly unable to believe that not only was it all still here in all its mess and beauty, but so were they. _A miracle_. Except not.

This giddiness that Aziraphale could feel, this brightness, this bubble of joy – well, he supposed it came from the champagne. It was nice to be this particular sort of drunk, delightfully weightless and airy. None of the maudlin undertones of red wine and regret. Perhaps he should switch more regularly to sparkling.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale turned to him. He was wearing an expression that tended to mean he had just been struck by a thought that he liked. “You haven’t seen the new bookshop. The old bookshop. Your bookshop.” Crowley grinned. “It’s exactly the same, only different.”

“You haven’t seen the new car,” said Aziraphale. Crowley’s car, too, had looked exactly the same this morning as the first time Aziraphale had found it purring on his doorstep. But based on the liberties it sounded like Adam had taken with his stock, there was every chance the car’s steering wheel was in fact on backwards, or the glove-box was full of boiled sweets.

“Oh, yeah,” said Crowley, with a faintly blissful expression. He rubbed the back of his neck, and then he nodded his head in the direction of Piccadilly Circus and Soho beyond it. “But you can go first,” he said, magnanimously.

That was kind of Crowley, Aziraphale thought, absently. He certainly was keen to see the state of the shop, although Crowley was presumably equally keen to perform an inventory of his car. Only then did it occur to Aziraphale that they could, of course, split up and go in opposite directions. But the notion seemed laughable. Why would they, when they hadn’t come close to running out of things to talk about in all this time, and now that there was no reason at all to pretend otherwise?

The feeling eddying in the air around him, Aziraphale realised, was more than tipsy ebullience. It was freedom. It was an unprecedented and slightly astounding sense that he could do as he liked. Aziraphale had been doing _rather_ as he liked for a very long time, of course, but always within the understanding that he had certain duties to perform, certain tenets to obey. That there were certain lines that couldn’t be crossed. But they were long crossed now, weren’t they? (Indeed, some part of him thought. Perhaps they had been crossed longer ago than he would care to admit.)

And so he and Crowley made their way up Piccadilly, the blanket of the summer night sky above them, the astonishing vibrancy of the human world on every side. Crowley had begun talking again. His voice had turned particularly slippery with the last couple of whiskies, tripping over and occasionally catching the wrong sides of words, but Aziraphale always knew what he was trying to say, so it didn’t really matter.

“So that’s what I’m saying,” Crowley said, gesturing expansively. “Square matter.”

Well, Aziraphale always knew what he was trying to say, except for at this exact moment. “I beg your pardon?”

“Square matter,” said Crowley, again, slower. “Squamatter.”

Aziraphale mouthed the syllables.

“As in scaly. _Squamatus_. C’mon, angel, you can still speak Latin.”

“Oh,” said Aziraphale. “Right. Yes. But what are you saying?”

“Squamata. ’Slike – snakes. All right, and lizards too, but whatever.” (Crowley performed a rather dismissive shrug.) “And you think – there’s more than ten thousand of ’em, you know that? I don’t mean ten thousand snakes, I mean ten thousand different _kinds_ of snakes, and thousands and millions of each of those kinds of snakes. Wriggling all over the planet on their little snake bellies, no idea what the humans are doing, probably no idea what humans _are_ , even, just think they’re other big snakes with legs.”

Aziraphale watched the meander of Crowley’s legs beside him on the pavement, thinking vaguely of how he had tried to emulate that particular, peculiar motion, while wearing Crowley’s body, only that morning. And how he had, apparently, succeeded. Or else none of the denizens of Hell paid enough regular attention to Crowley’s gait to have noticed the change.

It wasn’t entirely lost on Aziraphale that he and Crowley had now, to all intents and purposes, been inside one another. Which was quite funny, really, after everything else. After all the opportunities carefully avoided, all the risks negated, they’d rather overtaken themselves, and become more intimate with one another than was actually possible on the human spectrum of understanding.

Aziraphale now realised that Crowley appeared to have finished his paragraph, if that was what it was. He cleared his throat, and looked back up at Crowley’s face. “Is this something to do with St Patrick again?”

“What?” said Crowley. “No. I’m saying, go to Borneo, you’ve got a hundred and sixty different kinds of snakes, all on one patch of rainforest floor – well not _all_ of them on _one_ patch – but you’ve got a python swallowing a whole pig, you’ve got snakes in the river, snakes burrowing underground, some snakes people think can _fly_ , though they can’t really, actually they’re just jumping off a tree branch – and none of ’em any the wiser as to the possibility of nuclear war, and if there is one and they all die, then whose fault is that?”

“Right,” said Aziraphale, eventually. “Are you saying that you want to go to Borneo?”

“No, no – oh, well.” Crowley paused. “Dunno. Maybe. Got the whole world here for a bit longer, may as well at least go on holiday, look at some snakes.”

A holiday. Aziraphale often tried to combine business and pleasure where he could, find good excuses to be wherever it was he wanted to visit, but Crowley was quite right. There was no reason for either of them to be or not to be anywhere in particular any more. Crowley could go wherever he liked; Aziraphale could go wherever he liked.

“Somewhere hot,” said Crowley, absently. “Might be nice.” He glanced at Aziraphale. “What about you? Can’t quite picture you in a rainforest, somehow.”

Crowley was not wrong here. A brief sojourn to Hell had been quite enough excitement, and heat, for one century. “Not Borneo for me, perhaps, no.”

“No,” Crowley agreed. He shot Aziraphale a small smile. “When you talk about the world having been saved, you mean this, don’t you?” He gestured again, at the lights and taxis and Fortnum and Mason’s. “ _Your_ world. The Ritz. Drury Lane. The Proms. That bookshop you like in Highgate.”

“Oh, well, I – not only that. I mean, obviously I’m pleased the snakes in Borneo are alive and well.”

“No, you’re not,” said Crowley, still smiling. “You don’t care. It’s okay. You can admit to being a little bit selfish, at this point, I reckon.”

“I don’t think that’s very fair.”

“Just a little bit. Tiny bit.”

Funny – of all his foibles, and he was painfully aware of most, Aziraphale had never considered selfishness to be among them. But when Crowley said _Your_ _world_ like that, he was hitting upon something, perhaps. Not so much selfishness as a sort of self-retreat. A carefully-constructed cocoon of nice, safe things from which Aziraphale rarely had to emerge if he didn’t want to.

And yet Crowley, who would have been very irritated to be described as either _nice_ or _safe_ , had inveigled his way into that little cocoon, too. Often, indeed, he was at the centre of it. Aziraphale felt a brief, reflexive impulse to un-think or at least ignore this thought, which seemed a slightly dubious one – and then, almost immediately, he realised there was no reason to do so. Because of course that was where Crowley was, and there was now no need to pretend otherwise. Of course that was the world that Aziraphale had wanted to save, this little bubble of infinite time with the two of them in it. Of course it was.

There was a sudden, cool sensation on Aziraphale’s forehead. For an odd moment, he thought it was the feeling of benediction, but it was in fact starting to rain. Just a light summer drizzle, pleasant and refreshing in the close August night. They had reached Piccadilly Circus, and the rain splashed in sparkling drops into Anteros’s fountain. Anteros, the mirror of Eros; love answered, love returned, love requited. Aziraphale felt his whole being lighten, the rain fizzling on his skin as though he were burning with something, even though it was really only making this human body slightly damp.

When he looked round, Crowley was turning his collar up, and watching Aziraphale, as he always was. The rain was in his hair, and sprinkled over the skin of his hands and his nose. Aziraphale thought, suddenly, of the exact sensation of water on Crowley’s skin that morning, when he himself had been wearing that body, and stood – or rather bathed – before the legions of Hell. The way the water had dripped down his back, clung to his fingertips, as he climbed out of the bath. And he remembered, too, Crowley rain-soaked from a storm, centuries ago, it must have been. He’d been wet and cold and alarmingly close, and Aziraphale had thought about that strange night often, afterwards, rather furtively.

A new start. A second chance. God literally knew Aziraphale needed it.

As they walked on into Soho, Aziraphale had the strange feeling that there was something a little like magic in the air. Some lingering trace of the quick, vigorous craftsmanship of Adam’s newly-repaired world, and the instinct and humanity and love with which he had built it. The moon hung low and bright and heavy, and there were far more stars than ought to have been visible over central London at this, or indeed any, time of night. They were reflected in the blocked drains as they made their way along Greek Street. Little puddles of stars.

The bookshop came into view on its corner, dull red and glinting and perfect. Here everything was, made anew. And here he and Crowley were, together, like so many other nights before. Aziraphale felt the thing welling inside him reach the edges of his human body. It seemed unstoppable, uncontainable.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, just outside the bookshop door.

And Crowley, like always, said, “Yes?”

Aziraphale thought of being drunk under the stars with Crowley, on another night, in a blackout. And he allowed himself to unfurl the slightly scuffed and faded memory of what Crowley’s mouth had felt like when it had pressed against Aziraphale’s hand, and his wrist, and his lips. Aziraphale let that feeling flare into bright focus, and didn’t try to stop thinking about it, to forget it as abruptly as he’d remembered. Just let it exist in him.

How many times, he wondered, had Crowley held out a hand to him, over the years, over the centuries? Too many to count. And had Aziraphale ever held one out in return?

Aziraphale leaned forward and kissed Crowley again. The motion was soft and deliberate and as easy as sighing. It felt like it had done almost eighty years ago. It also felt like Crowley’s hand brushing his over the handle of a bag filled with books. And like the gleam of Crowley’s eyes when he swept off his glasses in the back room of the shop. And like Crowley’s frozen fingers in his, in front of a fireplace. And like the words _We could go off together_. And, and, and.

A second chance. A hundredth chance, a thousandth chance. _I’m sorry_ , Aziraphale thought, as he reached up at last to touch Crowley’s rain-wet cheek. _I’m sorry this took me so long._ Crowley, who had been waiting so patiently for those eighty years, and oh, for far, far longer. Crowley –

Crowley had gone completely still. Aziraphale pulled his lips and his fingertips away from his face, and took a half-step backwards, and said again, “Crowley?”

Crowley, mouth just a tiny bit open, hands by his sides, rain dripping from his hair, made a noise that sounded like nothing so much as a car stalling.

“Oh, Crowley, I’m sorry,” cried Aziraphale, the water and the weight of the years still tumbling around him, “I thought that you – is this not what we – ”

Crowley croaked out, “I think I might need a moment. To, um… yeah.”

“Of course,” said Aziraphale, “anything, yes, of course.”

The rain was getting heavier. He could feel it wetting down his hair, creeping down the back of his neck. He half-turned towards the bookshop door, but Crowley stayed where he was. Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“Do you, when you say a moment, do you mean... shall I make us a cup of tea? Or – you could go home, of course, if you like, and I’ll see you tomorrow? Or, lord, Crowley, if you need a year or two, I would understand perfectly, lord knows that in the scheme of things – ”

“No,” Crowley said, on a sudden breath. “No, caught up now, actually.”

There was a summer storm coming. There was a distant flash of light, and in the gap before the rumble of thunder, Crowley took hold of Aziraphale by the lapels of his coat and kissed him so hard he saw stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done! Thank you so much for reading. If you liked this story, you can also reblog it [on tumblr](https://justlikeeddie.tumblr.com/post/619285662106009600/the-parting-glass-chapter-1-equestrianstatue).


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